Remembering Aaron Bushnell

A member of the US Air Force sets fire to himself in a protest for Palestine.

You may not have heard of Aaron Bushnell, the member of the US Air Force who set fire to himself, and later died from his burns, in protest at US support for the Israeli genocide in Palestine.

These were his final words, recorded in a video shared online:

“Hi my name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided, will be normal".

*Bushnell arrives at embassy gate and places the camera down, empties flammable liquid from canteen on his head and takes out light*

"Free Palestine!"

*uses lighter to ignite himself*

"Free Palestine!

*through screams of pain he manages to shout “Free Palestine” three more times before falling silent. As flames engulf him he manages to do so a final time, using—as many have remarked—the last strength in his body to once more cry out,

"Free Palestine"

It is no accident that few outside of those who closely follow news from Palestine have heard of Aaron Bushnell. His example of conviction, courage, and disgust at what the US is helping the Israelis do to Palestinians is not one that Western media, and certainly not US media, wants to see promoted. They all the more certainly do not wish to see it promoted within the US military that Bushnell belonged to, and which is continuing to provide direct and logistical support to Israeli genocidaires operating in Palestine. An early New York Times response to Bushnell's self-immolation noted—in superfluous but clearly loaded fashion—that no Israeli embassy staff were harmed, as if this clearly very targeted act of protest posed a threat to the body of anyone but Bushnell. The note offers a subtle hint that having actual convictions can be dangerous.

Since his death, most Western media coverage has circled, vulture-like, around questions of Bushnell's mental health; another subtle hint, this time that convictions can be insanity.

Putting aside the total clarity of his final words — demonstrating a self-awareness far greater than the Western politicians who talk of “democracy" to voters who want a ceasefire, “journalists" who talk of reporting to audiences who see them repeating Israeli lies — Bushnell's behaviour is not that of an insane person, nor one acting impulsively in the sort of “mental health crisis" the media endeavour to infer. He had a job, no prior history of mental health concerns, the only crisis to have recently struck his life was the one in Palestine. Bushnell had written a will, had left his life savings to a charity working in Palestine. He said he did not wish for burial or scattering of his ashes presently, but when it is one day free, would want for them — if Palestinians would accept him — to be scattered in Palestine.

I think the Palestinians will accept him. Palestinians in Gaza have shared photos of Bushnell on their phones, with them in Gaza, as they continue trying to survive the genocide, and in this simple act bring him and his words to the people and place they were meant to be with. For a Palestinian population who feel forgotten, who feel Westerners must hate them or be indifferent to them to allow all this, Bushnell's act resonates with evidence of the contrary. His photo was held high at weekly protests for Palestine in Yemen, and there is a special resonance to his post within the US Air Force, which for years helped the fighter jets of the UAE and Saudi Arabia to bomb and terrorise Yemenis. Again, Bushnell's act is an evidence not only that not all of the US and Western world sees Arab lives as worthless, and fit only to be killed, some don't even want to go on living with a role complicit in the killing.

It is natural then that the Western media seeks to limit the power of such a poignant act. I hesitate to make societies of millions into individuals, but sometimes the metaphor is helpful, and just like the woman suffering abuse, or black or brown people racism, the establishment seeks to medicalise the final reaction — the shouting back, the snapping — as the mark of an insane person, rather than the logical consequences of a vicious system that drove them to it. Faced with the insane evil of Western politicians enabling genocide in Palestine, as Western media enable or encourage that genocide, it becomes a zero-sum imperative that the reaction against that genocide must be insane, not the system that executes it. Not only do the media wish to medicalise Bushnell for rejecting what he is asked to be a part of, they seek to medicalise all who suffer the condition of believing that truth and principles and justice are important considerations, and indeed requirements of life.

The final irony is that of course Western politicians and media are not unfamiliar with this notion, even pursued to the extreme point of self-immolation. In 2010, Tunisian grocer Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated in protest at the state corruption that was ruining his life and livelihood. His sacrifice and heroism began the Arab Revolutions of 2011 and was lauded even in the Obama administration. Vietnamese monk, Thích Quảng Đức, remains a globally recognised icon for his self-immolation and its role of drawing attention to the evils of the US war on Vietnam. More recently, Russian journalist Irina Slavina died from self-immolation in 2020, in protest at Vladimir Putin's government. Needless to say that the same people who question Bushnell's sanity praised Slavina for her protest against a Russian state that is in fact far less brutal than the Israeli regime.

Ultimately, and despite Bushnell taking the time to say it with total lucidity, it goes without saying that to set fire to oneself for a political cause is an extreme act. The intention, however, and as mainstream media has conspired to suggest by creating the moral panic that is its life-force, is not to encourage more of these acts, but to end the single act—an Israeli genocide in Palestine— that Western politicians and taxes and so publics are complicit in.

Aaron Bushnell did not want death, for either himself or anyone else. He died protesting for the Palestinian right to life, and he is a hero.